Chapter 9 - Small Moments Only

The two weeks that followed carried beauty with them, as if the sea endlessly rolled gifts, along with its cold waves, towards Shell Cottage. Draco's chat with Hermione hadn't exactly had the most romantic outcome, but it still took an immense weight off his chest. Every morning, Draco woke up too early, his sleep still disturbed by endless nightmares that made him eager to get out of bed. The idea of sleep, far from being relaxing, was a source of stress. As soon as the sun would start cracking open the horizon like a fresh egg, the orange yoke of the day pouring onto the sea, Draco would get out of bed and go straight downstairs, where Dobby waited for him. Together, they went to the sea. If at first Dobby insisted on accompanying Draco in the cold waves, guiltily covering himself with a warming spell, he soon accepted the comfort of staying on the beach. Bill was adamant that Draco should not go unsupervised outside, as he was technically a war prisoner and at constant risk of treason, but he had accepted that Dobby did not have to tail Draco during his entire time in the sea. It was mid-April 1998, and the water temperature at the crack of dawn didn't go above nine degrees celsius. The cold always shocked Draco when he went in, along with the feeling that he simply couldn't do it. As soon as the water would touch his skin, his lungs instantly would instantly tighten and his skin scream in protest. But every day, Draco persevered past that feeling of impossibility, immersing his legs, waist, torso, arms, neck and face in the water. As much as he didn't understand his impulse to do so, he had the profound feeling that it was necessary for him to follow it. No matter how painful it felt, he immersed himself from head to toe and swam for thirty minutes to an hour, depending on how dark his nightmares had been the previous night. Getting out was the best part. Dobby would perform a drying spell on Draco and summon a wonderfully thick and warm bathrobe that made him feel heavenly. They would then go back to Shell Cottage where he'd slip in the bathroom, going for a quick burning shower, as the house around him slowly awoke.

With the trio endlessly plotting on the upper floor, Bill and Fleur taking care of family and war-related matters, and Ollivander and Griphook recovering, Draco, Luna and Dean found themselves with a lot of free time on their hands. Dean was firm in his decision not to be friendly to Draco, but like any bored seventeen-year-old teenager, his desire to entertain himself was stronger than his grudges. The three of them found an unspoken compromise by spending time doing activities that didn't require many words. They spent time on the beach, Luna building and enchanting stand and seashell statues, while Draco and Dean played football and oftentimes a Muggle sport called "volleyball". Dean didn't like cooking but Luna did, so Draco would spend time with her around lunch and dinner time, learning how to cook — even though she might not have been the best teacher, with her strange ideas and her 'Book of Dream Recipes' on which she made progress every day.

It sometimes depressed Draco to think about how his life as a prisoner of war was infinitely more comforting and loving that any time he had ever spent with his own family. Even Dean, who never missed an opportunity to snub him, still gave him the occasional brotherly whack on the shoulder after a good match, which his father had never done. Even Bill, who clearly had doubts about having him in his house, made sure to include him in conversations and to not deprive him of anything. Draco had been to his old friends' houses, where the icy and neglectful atmosphere was similar to that of his own family. The level of warmth and welcome in Shell Cottage made him revise every single opinions he had about family and friendship dynamics. On one hand it made him scared of saying the wrong thing at all times, which was why he didn't speak much. On the other, it overwhelmed him with such a powerful feeling of affection that it randomly brought him to the brink of tears.

But what Draco enjoyed the most, during these two weeks, were the small moments in Hermione's company. They didn't amount to much in terms of time, but they dramatically deepened his will to live. That one time when she joined him to go swimming "for the hell of it", and screamed the whole time from the cold. The times she woke up earlier than usual, and sat at the table with him waiting for the others to awaken, enjoying a verbena and a bowl of yoghurt with honey and granola in it while the sun slowly rose. Talking about nothing important. The Muggle books she had lent him, which he had almost finished. Her dreams of the previous night (he never mentioned his, and she was delicate enough not to enquire). Their plans for the day. They didn't discuss the Big Things. What they were planning to do after the war if they came out of it unscathed; what Hermione, Harry and Ron were plotting upstairs; or anything similar to what had come out when they had been alone that first night in Shell Cottage, when they had both spilled tears over losing their families. On a similar topic, they didn't discuss the way Bellatrix had harmed Hermione, nor the days they had spent in the tent, all of them suffering, Draco barely conscious. No. It was all about books and the weather. About music. About the tension in her neck and the healing of his arm. And oftentimes, in those early mornings, they simply stayed quiet and watched the waves from the kitchen window. The troubles going on inside of his mind were still there. The idea of death was still there. The shame. The guilt, so strong that it made him nauseous, that it made him want to disappear into the sea. The raw hatred he felt when he saw himself in the mirror, less skinny than when he had arrived but still gaunt, his hair too long, his under-eye circles too dark. But the moments he spent with Hermione, no matter how small, felt like tiny suns that erased the darkness from within, and kept on shining for hours afterwards, extending their protection. Despair took over Draco at least once a day, like it had done consistently for the past year. But the way he approached it felt different. The despair that once felt like a fatality, and an omen of his soon-to-come death, now felt like something he was able to fight against, at least to some extent. The cold sea baths. The warm company. The literature, cooking and playing, bringing him back to reality. And Hermione's little suns. There was even something he had started doing, that stayed, curiously, only between him and Luna. He had been reading near the chimney as usual, when Luna had come to him one day, and stared at him for an uncomfortably long time.

"All good?" he asked.

"Yes! But you are even more troubled than usual. I can see it in your teeth."

"My teeth? How so?"

She shrugged and he relaxed his jaw.

"You know, when my teeth hurt like yours do right now, I do something specific."

"But my teeth don't hurt."

"They don't hurt physically. But they are hurting. You can trust me."

True enough, he had been feeling a pit in his stomach due to horrible nightmares involving the usual terrors, with sprinkles of Hermione being chased and tortured in the middle. But how was that related to his teeth?

"Alright. So. What do you do?"

"I write out a letter. It can be a letter to my own younger self, if I feel like she is feeling vulnerable. Or to my present self. Or to someone who has made my teeth hurt. And then, when no-one is looking, I throw it in the chimney's fire. You should try it someday."

And before he could reply anything, she had gone out of the house.

Father,

It's funny how you were never "dad". Mum was "mum" at least. But you were always "father". I don't know why I'm writing this. It doesn't make any sense. I know you don't care, because you never cared about who I was beneath the ways in which you could parade me around. But let me tell you about my earliest childhood memory. I have this theory that our earliest childhood memory defines a lot of the life that follows.

I must've been two, three years old. And there was some loud shouting in the living room. I remember walking, no, toddling towards that sound — because I was a toddler and I was weak, and I was under YOUR PROTECTION. I know this is just a juxtaposition that happened after the fact, but everything around me was red. The walls, the floor, the doors, the air. I arrived at the entrance of the room, and you were screaming in mum's face, and she was ugly crying, her face twisting so hard that I thought, for a second, that it was grandmother. I walked towards her. And at that moment, you turned towards me, your eyes so wide with hate that I distinctly remember seeing the white of your eyes all around your irises. The memory ends there. On that look you had. It filled me with a terror so primal, and so absolute, that I felt electrocuted by it. I hate you. I do, actually. I can write it. I do hate you. I hate you for the way you didn't bring me up, only brought me down. You made me believe that only power, wealth and appearances mattered, but if that was really all that matters in this life, what made me want to leave this world when we had it all, what made me leave the madhouse that was never a home, what is making me recently enjoy life so much more than I ever have before?

You know that they call their father "dad"? You know that the music she showed me is the best I ever heard, even though it was made by Muggles - yeah, that's right, dirty, filthy, horrible Muggles? Taking your words for it. Do you know your strong masculine heir of the Malfoy family cries every night? Do you know how good it's been to use my hands without a wand, to make food for blood traitors? To play Muggle sports? To see Dobby again, the filthy treacherous Muggle-loving house-elf? To lo to spend time with to appreciate to spend time with the Muggle-born girl that you made me hate so much, by constantly humiliating me by referencing her grades, looks and social status? The worst thing is father, if you did learn about all of it, the only concern you'd have would be for no-one to ever know. That would be it. I wouldn't disappoint you because I have already always disappointed you.

Sometimes I wish you were dad, and sometimes I were you were dead.

In a different way, sometimes I wish that you were a bad person to the core, because it would make it easier for me. But I know you're not. I've seen the enchanted origamis you taught me to make and I've heard about your education, worse, I've seen the physical scars it left on you. When I dig into the mountain of anger I have towards you, down to the very centre of it, I see this cave of sadness and pity that looks just bottomless. And I don't think I'll ever get to the bottom of it. I don't think I want to. I don't think I'm able to.

There's one thing I wish for myself. To fight whatever made you become you. To never become who you've let yourself become. If someone were to ever like me, not even as a partner but just a true friend, I would do whatever it takes to protect them.

You once told me to "count my friends" during a fight we had when I was only eight years old, referencing the fact that I didn't have any at the time, as a way of making fun of me. And it's true that I didn't have any real friends my whole life. But I can feel it happening. Even if it's not much. Even if it's just circumstantial. It's realer than anything I've ever experienced before. Realer than anything you've ever known.

Fuck you.

I hope I hope you're alive and well.

Your son,

Draco.